


I Love Custard

by Jashasedai



Category: Doctor Who, Formula 1 RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-24
Updated: 2018-11-24
Packaged: 2019-08-28 09:28:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16720755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jashasedai/pseuds/Jashasedai
Summary: The main character (Reader) is a huge Formula 1 fan.  When she used to travel with the Doctor, Formula 1 races of the past and future, were their points of call.  Now that she no longer travels with the Doctor, what place will Formula 1 have in her life?





	I Love Custard

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CustardCreamies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CustardCreamies/gifts).



> I'm assuming here that Reader doesn't have to be in the second person POV.
> 
> This is you, the reader, as the main character.

The rain plummeted with wet splashes over her boots.  She skimmed them through the puddles, kicking up sprays, like reverse rooster tails.  She walked across the concrete of the Roald Dahl Plass and stood in the place where the Doctor always parked the TARDIS when she was refueling her.  Her year traveling with her had been delightful, and frightening.

She wasn’t coming back, their travelling together was done.

She ran her hand over the charm bracelet.  It turned out F1 races in the future used information crystals as tickets.  She had carefully mounted each one on the bracelet.  She had been careful not to look, when they had walked past the hall of fame.

Not to look and see how many championships a certain German had won.

Interspersed with the data crystals from future races, were metal bolt nuts.  The nuts were from historical races.  Psychic paper got them into garages with Ayrton Senna, Peter Collins, and Juan Miguel Fangio.  Juan Manuel Fangio, she corrected herself. The Doctor hadn’t been please that they’d changed the man’s timeline, but as far as the computers in the TARDIS had been able to determine, the only difference, once the Sontarans had been sorted out was that the man’s name changed from Juan Miguel, to Juan Manuel.

Since she’d gotten back, no one seemed to have noticed the change.

She kept referring to him as Juan Miguel, with her Formula 1 fan friends, and they kept giving her odd looks.  As far as they knew, that had never been the 5 time champion’s name.

Anyway, there were never going to be any more races.

The Doctor had left her, and two years had passed and she hadn’t returned.

Sometimes she liked to come here, and remember.

She turned around and crashed into a man who had been standing a few feet behind her, trying to take a picture of the famous building on his camera phone.

His phone clattered to the ground, the same depth as the puddle.

“Awww,” He said, in a sweet, German accent.

She had crouched to try to catch his phone.  He reached it first, and her hand landed on his.

She looked up into hyacinth eyes.

By now, Formula 1 superstars should be old hat.  She had drunk champagne with James Hunt. She had taken the cap of Alain Prost’s head and put in on her own and they had danced over his second championship.

But THIS man.

She drew a breath like she’d been wounded.

He was looking at his phone, now.  Its screen had gone blank. He swiped his hoodie sleeve over it and tucked it in the kangaroo pocket of his hoodie.  “I’m sorry. I did not mean to back into you.”

She drew up her courage.  “It is fine.”

Should she tell him she was a fan?

He had an odd expression on his face.  “You recognize me.”

“I’m a racing fan,” She acknowledged.

He kept looking at her with the odd expression.

His eyebrows went up and then down.  “You know me from...racing.”

“Well, yes, you’re, you know, Sebastian Vettel.”

He grinned and ran his hand through his beard.  He had grown it out a lot during this winter break, it was curly and golden like he had seen a lot of sun.   “Are you here seeing the sights?”

“I used to come here with an old friend.”  She smiled ruefully. “You?”

“I came with friends,” He said.

They were the only ones in 30 meters.

“Oh!” She smiled and stepped back, of course he thought she was a fan and he wanted to be left alone.  “I hope you have a good time. The patisserie up the street has the best custard. If….if you like custard.  I know most people...do…” She finished, lamely.

“Thank you,” He reached out and shook her hand, “And thank you for rescuing me.”

“Put your phone in some rice.  It will be fine.” What was she saying?  He made millions of euros a year. He could buy a hundred phones.  She blushed.

“You are very pretty when you blush,” He said.

That was NOT what people said to perfect strangers.  This was getting really weird. She turned, tucking her hands in her pockets and walking away, her feet kicking up bigger splashes now.

She stormed across the plaza and around the corner of the nearest building.  She had come here to remember the Doctor and some stranger decided to make a pass at her.

Granted, when Graham Hill had done it, it had been flattering.  If she had seen Sebastian at one of his races, it would have been flattering, but there, at the races, with the Doctor and the psychic paper, she was a famous actress, or a popular singer, or the mysterious protege of one of the sponsors.  Here he had no reason to be impressed with her. She was just...her.

Well, she was impressive, but he had no way of KNOWING that.  He was just making a pass at her without knowing anything about her.

She huffed.

She was watching the ground so closely, she walked around another corner and bumped right into someone.

They collided, but his hands shot out and caught her before she bounced off and onto the ground.  “Come on!” He yelled. He dragged her with him. Around the corner behind them came another young man in a blue suit and a trench coat.

“Go!” The man in the trench yelled, waving a toy lightsaber with the the green light, but no tube.

Had she been caught up in some sort of liveaction Role Play Game?

Then she heard the familiar whine and crunch of a Cyberman walking.  She turned and put her head down and ran.

As they ran back into the open plaza, now mysteriously empty, a familiar high pitched tone rang out.  Like an invisibility cloak had blown away in the wind, a blue box appeared.

She let out a whoop and dived for the doors.

The young man tripped through the door behind her.  The Doctor ran through behind them.

“Doctor, you came back for me!” She said, as he started around the console, pushing and twisting and toggling.

Incredibly, the young man joined him.

She finally got a good look at him.

Her jaw dropped.

He was so much younger.  No longer with the full beard.  He couldn’t be much beyond his BMW days.

He looked up at her with his big, impossibly blue eyes.  He left the console. He approached her, and in one motion, slid his hands around her back, kissed her.  His lips were soft. He kissed like she was giving him life.

“I missed you,” He said.  His eyes were shining.

“What?!  Sebastian, what are you doing?  We don’t even...know each other.  I just met you…” She pointed towards the door, where presumably the plaza was long behind them.

But the Sebastian out there, with the beard and the wet phone, it hadn’t been  _ his _ first time meeting  _ her _ , had it?

She looked at the Doctor.  “What is happening?”

He was tall and thin, now.  He must be the Doctor, though, even though she didn’t know this face.

He stood at the console, leaning against it, heavily.  “I’m so sorry.”

“It took us so long to get back to you!” Sebastian apologized.

“We’re going to take you home.  To your own timeline. Now that the Cyberprojection facility has been destroyed, the false memories will start to fade.  You will start remembering your real life.” The Doctor said, moving around out of sight.

She turned back to Sebastian.  “I don’t understand.”

“This life isn’t real.  It is a projection the Cybermen put on you, to keep you trapped, they moved you in time and gave you false memories.”  Came the Doctor’s voice. “We’re going to take you where you belong.”

“So we can be together, like we are meant to be,” Sebastian said.  He held her hands.

She had a life, though.  A family. It seemed a little imperfect but it was real.  Of course. Wasn’t it?

She remembered her childhood.

Then, sleeting in among the other memories, came new memories, starting years earlier, in Germany, with a different family.  Still imperfect, but so much more what life SHOULD be.

And a little blonde haired boy with the biggest smile.

“No,” She said, “That is Hanna’s life.  You are a Formula 1 driver. I don’t know you.”

He shook his head.  “They couldn’t keep you from remembering me, but they made you believe I loved someone else.  They made you believe we couldn’t ever be together, but you started remembering. The Doctor, you remembered travelling with her.  You remembered when we travelled to meet all those Formula 1 drivers.”

“You aren’t a world champion?” She asked.

His eyes went wide, and he turned to the Doctor.  “I’m going to be a world champion?!”

The Doctor tilted his head in an annoyed manner.

“I am a Formula 1 driver,” Sebastian told her.  “It is my rookie year. You have been at every one of my races.”

“ _ She _ never goes to your races,” She said.

“Maybe they couldn’t make you believe I would bring anyone but you,” He said, squeezing her hands in his big, warm ones.  “They can’t make you believe things that could never happen.”

She started to cry.  She threw her arms around his shoulders.  She could remember their first kiss, now, in soft candle light, and a meal he’d made himself, the kiss before they realized his pasta was burned beyond edibility and they had gone for take away.  She could remember screaming for her boyfriend’s racing. She could remember the day the Monaco Grand Prix had been interrupted by the now familiar sound of Daleks, and then every non-race weekend, stepping into the TARDIS and travelling to some amazing new adventure, the two of them, in the TARDIS with the Doctor.

She kissed him again.  She stroked his smooth cheek.  “Have you ever considered growing a beard?”

He threw his head back and laughed.  He held her close.

Her old life faded away.

The last thing to fade was the code word the Doctor had programmed into her memories, so every time she saw it, it would remind her that they were coming for her.

Custard.

 

Finis.

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I didn't imply that you bailed on your partner. I said that even though you felt like no one wanted to read what you write, that people still do.
> 
>  
> 
> Real people don't belong to me. Established fiction does not belong to me. This story belongs to me.


End file.
